


just like the cliffs found down by the bay

by thimbleoflight



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, and mostly skirt the topic of the dead man in favor of their own insecurities, in which isabel lovelace and miranda pryce attend douglas eiffel's funeral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 18:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15345864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleoflight/pseuds/thimbleoflight
Summary: “So they’ve got flying cars now,” says Isabel, after the casket is lowered into the ground.





	just like the cliffs found down by the bay

“So they’ve got flying cars now,” says Isabel, after the casket is lowered into the ground. It’s been two decades since she last saw Miranda Pryce, who hasn’t aged a bit. Her eyes are old tech now. She’d been about eighty years ahead of the curve when she made them, though, so that’s something. Not too many people need them, but you still see them these days on the occasional young person, about as common as thick glasses were in the old days.

Usually a little bit more realistic, but Pryce didn’t seem to be interested in giving people the impression that she was human. Now she wears dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, and if you’re not paying attention she looks like she could’ve been the daughter of the eighty-year-old man who is buried here today. She bothered with convention enough to show up in a nice black dress.

“We,” says Pryce, absently. “I rode in one. It was bumpy.”

She seems at home now, in a way that she didn’t for the first few years that Isabel stuck around, before it got too hard. Before she took off, for Disneyland, and then for Paris, and then for Antarctica because why not, and between now and then, too many places to count.

“I’m sorry,” says Isabel.

She means it, too.

“It’s all right,” says Pryce.

“You shouldn’t have had to stay with each of them by yourself,” says Isabel.

“I knew everything,” says Pryce. “All the things I was supposed to do to take care of them. Like I’d read dozens of books on the subject, I knew… physiologically, what was happening.”

“That probably didn’t make it easy,” says Isabel.

Her dad had passed away, a few decades back, a quick, painless heart attack, or so they’d said at least. Her mom had gotten pneumonia, a few years down the line, and it was quick. She’d never had to care for anyone. She’d never had to watch them grow old. Watching Eiffel and the others–but Eiffel was the hardest. Jacobi’d  _hurt_. Eiffel, though, Eiffel’s death was something else, it burned in her the way that her hand had, the time that she’d touched dry ice.

Yeah, she’d stayed away, and now when she thought about it she almost threw up.

“No,” said Pryce, “it was easier than, I think, you think it was.”

Reason number two to stay the hell away, she thought–fifty years could go by and Miranda Pryce would still be a heartless robot.

The gravestone reads Douglas Ferdinand Eiffel, and she thinks, she knew that once, but she’d forgotten. It’s not a bad day for a funeral, and there are flowers around his grave. Reds and yellows, nice against the green grass. Who arranged this? Probably Anne, Isabel thinks, because she keeps forgetting that Anne’s not a teenager any more and she can do things like arrange for pleasant funerals or make sure that her dad has somewhere nice to rest. It doesn’t feel like something that Pryce would put together. It’s the kind of thing that Eiffel would hate, the way that he hated birthdays, because it was about him, but the kind of thing, too, that he’d put together if he could.

He did, for her, they said.

“I miss him,” Pryce adds, as if this is secondary, somehow, to how she apparently coolly watched her friends die, one by one. As if it’s a question that she has, as if it’s a gap in her perfect knowledge of  _physiologically, what was happening_. “Even towards the end, I knew I would miss them all.”

“That’s usually not the surprising part,” says Isabel.

“Were you angry?” says Pryce, turning those eerie, glowing eyes on her. “You could have visited. They wouldn’t have minded.”

“ _I_  minded,” said Isabel.

_Do you know what it’s like when you can’t give them comfort?_  she’d asked Minkowski, or something along those lines.  _One by one, watching them–_

“Oh.”

_And you checked out!,_ she remembers Minkowski hissing at her, some time later, but it all seems like such a short time now, given how much time has passed since,  _you played the martyr, you didn’t want to deal with it!_

She doesn’t know if she remembers the conversations right any more, it’s been so long and she played them over in her head so many times. Pryce folds her hands behind her back.

“You and I should keep in contact,” she says, lightly.

“He asked you to say that, didn’t he?”

Pryce peers over her glasses at Isabel.

“Does it matter?”

“He shouldn’t have,” says Isabel, and, oh, no, her voice is cracking. Her voice is cracking in front of Miranda fucking  _Pryce_ , of all people, who even with fifty years of learning morality and friendship from Eiffel, is still a creepy emotionless robot. Pryce doesn’t offer her any comfort, doesn’t even look at her.

“Then don’t.”

Isabel wipes at her eyes, while Pryce ignores her. Eiffel’s  _gone_ , she realizes, and she remembers when she held out her arm to Selberg, the first time she tried to stop anyone from losing Eiffel. Over, and over, she remembers the gun pressed to her head, but that wasn’t for him. Minkowski had been right. It’s worse than when he lost his memories, too. How had she ever mistaken that for the death of her friend?

She’d gotten a second chance, all those years ago, when she came back from the dead, to see everything through to the end with them, and she  _hadn’t_. She’d drop to her knees here, if it didn’t mean letting Pryce know that something was wrong.

“I’m staying with Anne,” says Pryce, “for now. You know where to find me. Or we can meet up again for her funeral. Frankly, it’s up to you.”

Isabel shivers, and then asks Pryce, “you got your phone on you?”

Pryce rolls her eyes, and holds out her hand.

Isabel types her contact information into the phone.

“Weird how we’re not just beaming this directly into each other’s brains yet, huh,” she says, but the effect is kind of ruined by how she has to sniffle partway through.

“Give me five years,” says Pryce, “but I think the technology would be inefficient for use in daily life.”

She holds the phone back out to Pryce, trying not to think about how much she kind of hates her for getting everything so goddamn wrong, except, it turns out,  _this_. Pryce swipes at the phone, and shortly, Isabel’s phone buzzes.

“Ah. Not even a dummy number,” says Pryce, “you’re losing your touch, Captain.”

“Whatever,” says Isabel. “I’ll give you a call.”

“I’d like that,” says Pryce, and even if Eiffel asked her to do it, Isabel realizes, maybe she means it. Isabel leaves her there, among the flowers and the dead, a bright Florida day. Even now, Isabel can’t help but be grateful for the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Last Waltz" by Horse Feathers.
> 
> There was this prompt thing on tumblr that was like, "send me a made up fic title and I'll write a summary of the fic I'd write to go with it" and somebody sent me my own AO3 name, BUT IT'S FROM A HORRIBLY SAD SONG. Also, I didn't really intend to be so edgy when I picked this handle. I just thought it was a pretty image.


End file.
